As Dom Saliani puts it: “Shakespeare wanted his works to be read and not just seen.”

This is an important consideration because it means that Shakespeare composed his works knowing that what he wanted to convey would come through in the complete written work. Even if the staged plays were modified and/or shortened, what he intended to convey still survived in the complete written form. There is good reason to believe that Shakespeare was actually composing literature on the basis that this would be the case.